Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) today introduced a new family of image cognition processors (ICPs) for the driver assistance market. The SCP2200 family features CogniVue’s APEX™ IP technology and is ideal for automotive smart camera applications. The family, along with the accompanying libraries, hardware and software development kits, gives automakers a comprehensive set of tools to design smart camera applications, helping them to bring their solutions to market more quickly.

Many of today’s car buyers are demanding more infotainment and safety features, including front, rear-facing and surround-view cameras. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed a mandate that would require all U.S. passenger vehicles to implement rear-facing camera technology in the near future. The regulation is intended to address the dangerous blind zones behind vehicles that NHTSA estimates cause 292 deaths and 18,000 injuries each year. The European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) standards are also increasingly focusing on active pedestrian safety.

Automakers face a number of challenges as they work to improve vehicle safety through applications such as vehicle-mounted cameras for improved pedestrian detection. With regulators predicting vehicle cameras and viewing screens will cost the auto industry as much as $2.7 billion a year or around $160 to $200 per vehicle, cost is a major concern. Freescale’s SCP2200 solution minimizes the bill of material by integrating high-density memory and allows for camera miniaturization.

The parallel image processing architecture of the Freescale SCP2200 family enables concurrent processing of image data, which translates into high performance at lower clock frequency than competitors’ current offerings. This level of performance is delivered with market-leading power consumption and cost effectiveness.

“Freescale is working to make new, advanced technologies more accessible for the mainstream automotive market,” said Ray Cornyn, Freescale’s vice president of automotive microcontrollers. “The SCP2200 family provides highly integrated, cost-effective solutions for smart automotive camera applications, while also offering industry-leading performance at very low power. This technology makes smart camera technology practical for most vehicle markets and provides significant safety benefits.”

“CogniVue is pleased to collaborate with Freescale on this complete enablement offering including optimized toolkits and development libraries,” said Simon Morris, CEO of CogniVue Corporation. “The SCP2200 is available with comprehensive software and hardware reference solutions that will accelerate the development of outstanding ADAS products.”

The cost, power and size advantages of the SCP2200 family will enable a high fitting rate in all car segments and ensure a significant increase of road safety.

As part of its continued focus on providing comprehensive software and tools support and enabling designers to bring their applications to life, Freescale, in cooperation with CogniVue, also plans to provide a software development kit, reference design solution and prototype design camera module to accompany the SCP2200 ICPs. This comprehensive solution set, in addition to the cost-effective, low-power SCP2200 processors, helps reduce a customer’s time to market.

SCP2200 key features

ARM926EJ RISC CPU main processor

Image cognition processor capable of up to 34 billion operations per second

The SCP2200 family is available now in limited quantities. Contact a Freescale sales representative for pricing. For more information, visit www.freescale.com/scp2200.

About the Freescale Technology Forum

Created to drive innovation and collaboration, the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) has become one of the developer events of the year for the embedded systems industry. The Forum has drawn more than 48,000 attendees at FTF events worldwide since its inception in 2005. The FTF Japan 2012 event will take place Oct. 22-23 in Tokyo. For more information, visit www.freescale.com/FTFJapan.

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) is a global leader in embedded processing solutions, providing industry-leading products that are advancing the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets. From microprocessors and microcontrollers to sensors, analog integrated circuits and connectivity – our technologies are the foundation for the innovations that make our world greener, safer, healthier and more connected. Some of our key applications and end-markets include automotive safety, hybrid and all-electric vehicles, next generation wireless infrastructure, smart energy management, portable medical devices, consumer appliances and smart mobile devices. The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing and sales operations around the world. www.freescale.com

About CogniVue Corporation

CogniVue is the world’s leading innovator of Image Cognition Processors (ICP) and software for embedded vision systems. CogniVue’s ICPs and comprehensive software offering provide advanced technology for companies developing embedded vision applications for automotive, retail, consumer and security markets. The core technology is built on its proprietary, flexible, massively-parallel APEX™ vision processor engine. APEX provides best performance, per area (mm2), per power (mWatt) for vision systems, providing companies with the ability to develop previously implausible, innovative vision products implemented in the smallest smart camera modules in the world. Founded in 2005, CogniVue is a privately held company headquartered in Ottawa-Gatineau, Canada and was recently recognized by the EETimes as among the globe’s 'Silicon 60' of emerging start-ups. For more information, please visit www.cognivue.com.